The Cats Will Play
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Riza has too much going on to pay attention to boys, however attractive they may be. Backstory. Spoilers. Roy/Riza. Not worksafe for sex.


The genuinely obnoxious thing about Roy—Mister Mustang—her father's apprentice is that he's really good-looking.

Riza has never been one for romance, or at least not romance in real life. She likes it in books as much as the next person, but, well . . . but boys her own age are foolish and immature, and boys a few years older than her aren't much better. And anyway, she has too many other things to do: she's serious about her schoolwork, she does her best to keep the creaky old family estate in some semblance of liveability, and she tries to make sure her father eats and sleeps at least occasionally. She has too much going on to pay attention to boys, however attractive they may be.

Roy Mustang is very, very attractive.

He's also an alchemist and an idealist, which, she knows from bitter experience, means he's even more trouble than your average stupid teenager.

Still, when she learns her father will be away for the weekend, on some errand he does not deign to tell either his daughter or his student, she cannot help the fact that her pulse picks up. She's going to be alone in the house with Roy (Mister Mustang), all weekend, unsupervised.

The feeling is just blind biology, she tells herself, nothing more. It is purely instinct that draws her to his laughter and the way it fills the house with warmth and light. It's only hormones, nothing more.

Nothing more.

Her only living family already loves his arrays more than any person living. She will not give anything of herself to another alchemist.

* * *

Roy's teacher's daughter is as off-limits as off-limits can be, Roy knows, and that oughtn't be a problem. When he first came to live at the Mustang house, he was sixteen and she was fourteen, and a weedy, half-grown fourteen at that. He'd felt a little sorry for her, shut up alone in a big empty house with her eccentric father. (And it wasn't just a big empty house but a big empty house that she had to take care of herself, so there were only islands of liveability—the bare clean kitchen, the sitting room, her bedroom and his, the study—amidst many abandoned rooms, sparse furniture draped in dustcloths and the grime of years dulling everything.) But he'd barely noticed her then, a silent ghost in the shadows of the big house.

He notices her now.

It isn't anything so cliche as that she's grown up beautiful. She's still sharp, awkward; her eyes are too big for her face but more than that too knowing for a girl of sixteen; she cuts her hair shorter than most boys' for the simplicity of its care; she is silent and watchful and wry and he prefers words and laughter in his world.

And she is compelling, absolutely: more compelling by far than any of the girls he's met in town. He sees her move around the kitchen, making simple suppers for her father, and he cannot stop watching her though she makes no effort to entice him to watch her.

He is as much terrified of her as he is drawn to her, and that's the simple truth.

* * *

"What do you want to eat?" Riza asks, brisk and businesslike, unpacking the grocery bags. "I have the makings for cold cut sandwiches, or noodles with sauce."

"You don't have to make dinner for me," Roy says, surprised. When Riza makes food for herself and Master Hawkeye, he often eats it, but he wasn't expecting this.

"Don't be silly. I'll be feeding myself, and it's very little more trouble to feed you, too." Her back is to him, and he can see her posture, the graceful uprightness of a lily.

(He is not usually so romantic in his thoughts. It worries him.)

"Then cold cuts," Roy says, as much because that's the simpler option as anything else.

Later, he will not be able to say what they talk about over food. All he is aware of is the way the world seems to be drawing a bright golden thread between himself and Riza, pulling them together over the unromantic supper of sandwiches and pickles. If he kisses her, she'll taste salami and pickle on his breath.

The gravity between them doesn't seem to care anything for that kind of detail, though.

Still, he isn't going to kiss her first. He isn't. He isn't. She's his teacher's daughter, and—

* * *

She knows that it's very, very, very unwise, but she leans forward a little, and just as she predicted, Mister Mustang (Roy) leans forward to meet her.

His mouth is as soft as the kiss is clumsy. They bang noses, teeth, chins; she has to back up a few inches before trying again, but that first breath of contact (lip to lip and breath to breath) is enough to draw her back for more. He tastes like the bread and coldcuts they had for dinner, and that shouldn't be attractive, but it is.

She kisses him—or is kissed by him; past a point she can't tell, and doesn't think it's an important distinction anyway—again and again and then again, breath and saliva and noses bumping and her lip caught painfully between the flat ridge of her teeth and his, and it's good, it's right, it's perfect because it's him, and them, and for a little while she's not alone.

She knows he's a kind man, if not always a nice one, and she knows he wouldn't take advantage of his teacher's daughter, and so that's why she's the one to first slip hands under clothing.

The feeling of the skin of his waist, beneath his shirt, makes her feel faint. She bites her lip to steady herself and then loses the composure that bought, instantly, when he leans forward to coax her lip free and draw it into his mouth.

He is the most beautiful man she has ever seen in her life, and that fact hurts: but for right now it's okay, because his dark, dark eyes are focused on her, and not on a book of ciphers.

She kisses him again, and to her, he tastes of Roy and nothing else.

* * *

The feeling of her hands on his bare skin makes him jerk as though he were stung by array-backlash. It's so good, her small strong hands on his waist, tracking with unsure determination around to his back and up his spine, that he's briefly afraid he's going to embarrass himself. He kisses her for both the pleasure and the distraction it offers, and then lets his hand fall, gently, on her breast.

She looks at him, hopeful and determined and unsure, the darkness of her eyes and the set of her jaw that of someone far older than she is—and he wonders how he ever failed to notice that she was beautiful.

"Roy," she says, and it's the first time she's said his given name, and he has to breathe deep and swallow.

"How far do you—?" he begins ,and can't finish. But she understands, of course.

"Nothing that could get me pregnant," she says, her eyes still both hopeful and determined.

So it is that they wind up sprawled on the worn old couch, mouth to mouth and kissing hard. His fingers between her legs draw small noises from her, small noises that he feels with his lips on her throat; and her hand slips into his pants to fumble his erection into her grip.

It lasts hardly any time at all for him, but longer for her, and he is awed by how beautiful she is like this, and humbled by his particular lack of skill.

But eventually, in time, it does work for her, and he kisses her collarbone, her throat, and then her mouth.

* * *

Beneath the heat of his gaze, his black eyes, his beautiful face, she has to use all of her composure to keep from squirming. Her body is limp and soft beneath his.

"I thought you'd want to find out my father's secrets this weekend," she says, breathlessly, because she can think of nothing else to say. "Not—"

"The weekend is young," Roy says, and the depth of his voice brings a double meaning to his words that makes her flush even more than she already is.

* * *

If he's honest with himself, this, here, lying on the couch beside her, is better than the secrets he could glean from Master Hawkeye's files.

But Roy is rarely honest with himself.


End file.
